Teaching Culture and Epidemiology to Public Health Students
Fernanda Claudio, Division of International and Indigenous Health, School of Population Health, University of Queensland
There is a distinct bias in the teaching of health research towards epidemiological research methods. When these methods do not or cannot address issues such as context, history, and perceptions of respondents, then qualitative research methods are deployed as a secondary or adjunct approach. However, without an integrated approach, neither of these methods delivers a holistic view of the research problem at hand. In this paper, I discuss teaching culture and epidemiology as concepts that inter-link both at the theoretical and practical levels to deliver health research questions that encompass a wider realm of informants’ experience.
